I have a color design I’m hoping to print onto canvas, that I believe would require about 3 11x17 sheets, which i’ve heard the Dye Sublimation printer can do… Is there be an opportunity for me to learn how to use it within the next few weeks? please and thank you!
The trick to dye sub is that it only works on polyester fabric, or other fabrics that will melt a bit. I think we’ve got a roll of fabric that’s poly that sort of looks like canvas.
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good to know!
Hi! I’m one of the dye sub teachers!
Did you want to print a photograph on a stretched canvas? Or did you have something else in mind?
@dryad2b is 100% right. Dye sub is a polyester process.
But depending on what you want to do, there are some ways we can coat canvas to accept the dye.
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Hi Amelia! This is for an electronic e-textile project. I’m hoping the material used will be a durable, canvas-like material. It won’t be stretched on a canvas. The goal is to print a custom color pattern on fabric, and then lasercut that material along with other materials that will get sandwiched together, most likely with a heatset fusible adhesive layer. Seems its important to mention the lasercut part to make sure the material will be laser-safe. You can get an idea of what im going for on my site… Sonic Textiles - Darcy Neal
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That project looks amazing, I cannot wait to see it.
You can email pellon directly and ask if the specific interfacing # you want to use is laser safe. I believe several types of wonder-under are also laser safe.
My personal workflow was to attempt to dyesub the fabric, temporarily adhere it to the dye sub paper, then be able to register that paper in the laser to get an accurate cut.
Cary also uses a thin MDF that is polyester coated for dye sub. It’s absolutely photograph quality.
From my raccoon quilt, and celestial cliffs corset projects, it does seem that some amount of bleed is useful.
P.s. people still love the picture frame camera in creative arts, visitors stop and comment on it every week.
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Get certified on the Epilog Fusion laser … it can align your vector cut(s) to registration marks in your artwork.
You could get your picture(s) custom printed on a wide variety of different fabrics at Spoonflower.com. You can buy most fabrics either by the yard, by the fat quarter or with 8" (?) squared “samples”. Include your alignment marks in your artwork before you have it printed. Make sure your alignment marks (circles) are at least 1" away from your artwork or it gets confused.
Iron on your fusible backing and then do the laser cutting using the Fusion. I have done this a bunch of times for quilt appliqués.
I have not tried laser cutting multiple layers of fabric but if you think you’re going to do that, you should do a test. I can tell you firsthand that multiple layers of paper will catch on fire. Big time. If your fabric is fused together that might resolve the issue but IDK for sure.
In my example my artwork has some bleed around the edges in case the vector alignment wasn’t perfect (but it was).
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That is a good suggestion. Didn’t know that about the Epilog.
I checked it out and its ~$17 for a “fat quarter”/Size: 21 in x 18 in. That’s ok but I was hoping to be able to try out a few different tests, which could add up. not sure how much the dye sublimation will add up to, but hopefully it’s much less than Spoonflower would be.
When i’ve lasercut fabric in the past, I dampened it first so that the wetness helped to keep the material weighed down, and dialed the laser power down to reduce firehazard. Was able to get detailed cuts out of thinner material this way many years ago. Darcy Neal on Instagram: "Lasercut fabric experiments"
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Spoonflower uses a combo of dye sub and direct to fabric printing depending on the fabric. It may still be the right solution for some fibers, but if polyester is desired, then we have that.
100% polyester is laser safe and suitable for dye sub. I have some leftover fabric from projects
I’m sure the dye sub will cost you much less … but you will also be much more restricted on the fabrics you can use. That’s the trade-off.
One challenge I’ve had with dye-sub’d fabric is that all the 100% polyester fabric I’ve used was somewhat prone to shifting and skewing during post-print handling. It’s hard to find polyester in the big box fabric stores. I bought some at Mood Fabrics, described in this post.
There’s always so many ways to make a project!
I wish I’d known about the epilog registration marks, I’ve been doing it the hard way on Donner & Blitzen!
Darcy’s project is so stinkin cool, I can’t wait to see how it comes out.
Price/yd
Dye sub is 1.25 per legal sheet, 2.25 per tabloid sheet, ink is included in that price. So it’s 9 sheets of tabloid to get to about 1 yd of fabric, so about $20/yd. There’s pluses and minuses to both print methods. If I needed a larger area than 13x19, I’d certainly be sending it off.
Polyester skew:
I used bridal satin on the corset project I dye subbed it, then ironed pellon interfacing onto the back. The heat of the iron on the back wasn’t enough to bother the dye (I tested)
Pellon makes a peel and stick, wash-away interfacing, which is laser safe, which I wish I’d used in this current quilt. Lol.
Unexpected polyester sources:
Thicker polyester is out there- blackout curtain material is 100% poly and has zero stretch/skew. Many roller shades material is also polyester. There’s even polyester wallpaper. Many other utility fabrics are poly as well.
Lol, there’s just too many ways to make things and not enough details on Darcy’s design needs. I’ve got enough various kinds of dye sub scraps that I’m happy to let them experiment and see what works.
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The Space still has the rest of the roll of blackout material I donated, yes? I have many more rolls…
I love these material discussions and it’s great to know that dye sublimation is going to be cheap enough that I can test out a few swatches…, it’s so interesting to know what options are available! My only requirement is that the end result isn’t too flimsy, which I know is vague!
I will have the top sublimation layer,
circuit traces cut out of copper fabric behind that,
insulation layer behind that,
then potentially a ground plane behind that,
with heat set bonding between the layers.
This could easily end up way thicker than I anticipated… I’ll just have to test and see!
I’ve never tried to make an e-textile project in this particular style so it’s all an experiment for me!
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One thing to make sure of when doing the dye sublimation is that you really want each printed design to fit onto a single sheet of paper. if a design is split accross multiple pages then you will be VERY prone to failure when trying to heat press it. You will most likely end up with gaps between prints, or overlaps of transfers.
One correction on Amelia’s post the cost of tabloid size prints is $2.50 per page when the paper is purchased from DMS.
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definitely hoping to use multiple sheets for a larger design…
How big? Trying to press something large than 16"x20" in multiple pressings will also result in problems in regards to artifacts of multiple pressings. Sections that are subjected to heat multiple times will fade on each subsequent pressing.
This is good to know. I might try to stick to smaller than 11x17 for simplicity’s sake since eim still testing things. Would be interesting to see examples of prints deforming from multiple presses. I’m doing mostly textile prints with bold lines…
If you need large than 11x17, or 13x19 which our printer will do, but small enough to fit on our press, I can print them on my 24" dye sub printer. I charge $2 per linear foot.
To test the press issue that I was describing you can print an image, attach it to your textile, press half of it, and then press the other half.
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I’ve got some samples in the dye-sub teaching box of prints that have been pressed multiple times. I’ll be up at the space on thurs night if you want to look through.
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great! I think that works, will DM you to confirm. thanks again for all your help!